"So much money...! I have genuinely never seen this much physical cash in my entire life!"
Chen Meijia stared blankly at the massive stacks of crisp hundred-yuan bills piled high on the glass coffee table, her eyes practically sparkling as she drooled onto her collar.
Under normal circumstances, her daily routine consisted of collecting rent from individual residential tenants across the properties owned by Adrian Li. She usually collected anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan a day, which she would immediately deposit into Adrian's designated corporate account at the local bank.
For Meijia, ten or twenty thousand yuan was no longer a mind-boggling sum. After all, simply living in a modern complex like Ode to Joy meant she was already far better off financially than most ordinary, working-class civilians in Shanghai.
However, earlier that afternoon, a major sub-landlord responsible for multiple commercial units called her, announcing that he was paying three full months of rent in advance as a single lump sum. To transport the staggering amount safely, Meijia had been forced to hire two muscular security guards just to escort her back from the bank with over 800,000 yuan in pure, liquid cash.
"Hey! Meijia, why the hell are you sitting there drooling over the money?!"
Seeing Meijia practically mesmerized by the two heavy leather duffel bags packed with cash, Hu Yifei immediately reached over and tapped her forehead.
Honestly, regardless of whether a balance was displayed on a digital banking app or printed on a bank check, raw numbers on paper could never deliver the staggering psychological impact of physical currency.
The towering pile of over 800,000 yuan in cash was enough to completely stuff two large handbags to the brim. Let alone an easily distracted airhead like Chen Meijia, even a fierce, independent woman like Hu Yifei had felt her heart skip a beat when she first laid eyes on the mountain of red bills.
"Ah... but we have to go deposit it right now?!" Meijia whimpered, a deeply bitter, reluctant expression instantly plastering itself across her face.
She desperately wanted to savor the illusion of holding real wealth for just a few minutes longer! 'I would never dare to embezzle a single penny from the Boss, but simply holding this much money makes me feel like a multi-millionaire!'
"What on earth are you daydreaming about?" Yifei scolded, lightly swatting the girl's shoulder as she picked up one of the heavy duffel bags. "Hurry up and move your ass so we can take this straight to the bank vault. If something goes wrong while we're carrying this much cash around, it will be an absolute nightmare!"
Before Yifei could drag Meijia out the door, her smartphone suddenly vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out, her heart instantly skipping a beat as the caller ID flashed across the screen.
Adrian Li.
"H-Hello? Is... is that you, Landlord?" Yifei answered, her athletic composure instantly fracturing as her voice wavered with an embarrassing, uncharacteristic nervousness.
"Hello, Yifei," Adrian's calm, aristocratic voice echoed smoothly through the speaker.
In the master suite of Mansion No. 1, Adrian was lounging back on his plush leather recliner. Fan Shengmei was kneeling submissively between his thighs, her lips stretched wide around his thick, throbbing cock as she deeply swallowed his shaft. Adrian casually rested both hands on the back of Fan Shengmei's head, gently pressing down to slow her rhythmic swallowing so he could speak without interruption.
"I merely wanted to check in on you," Adrian continued softly into the phone, his fingers idly tangling in Fan Shengmei's hair as the woman gagged quietly on his girth. "I noticed you haven't been down to my private combat ground for your conditioning sessions these past few days."
"Um... well..." Yifei felt an intense, burning heat flush across her cheeks. She forced a clumsy, awkward smile, desperate to construct a believable excuse. "I... I haven't been feeling particularly well these past few days, so I decided to take a short break!"
The primary reason she had avoided the private gym wasn't illness at all—it was pure, unadulterated psychological panic. She was terrified of running into him again!
She felt completely mortified whenever she recalled her bizarre, visceral physical reaction on the mat that afternoon. When his thick, rock-hard shaft had accidentally pressed firmly into her lower spine during their spar, every single muscle in her body had gone rigid with a phantom heat. For over twenty years, she had carried herself as a fiercely independent, untouchable tomboy. She had never experienced such an overwhelming, uncontrollable surge of physical submission toward a man.
As a woman who proudly claimed to live by her instincts, if this had happened under normal circumstances, Yifei would have followed her body's desires without hesitation and directly confronted him with a bold confession.
'But the situation is completely cursed!' Yifei screamed internally, her mind in a total chaotic spiral. 'Even though my physical body reacted so violently when I was wrapped in his arms, deep down in my subconscious, I am still stubbornly thinking about that spineless, cheeky radio host, Zeng Xiaoxian!'
This suffocating, contradictory conflict between her physical body and her emotional confusion had forced her to freeze all her plans, deciding to isolate herself until she could regain her cold, logical composure.
"By the way, Yifei... why do you insist on continuing to address me as 'Landlord'?" Adrian asked smoothly over the line, his tone laced with dark amusement as he pressed Fan Shengmei's face deeper into his lap. "Just call me Adrian."
"Ah—what?! The... the signal is suddenly terrible!" Yifei panicked, her brain completely short-circuiting at the intimate suggestion. She pulled the phone away from her ear, shouting at the top of her lungs, "Hello?! I can't hear you at all! The signal is dropping—I'm hanging up now!"
Click.
She frantically tapped the end-call button and slammed her phone onto the table, her chest heaving as she patted her heart in sheer, lingering terror.
'I am going to die! I am seriously going to die of a heart attack!' she gasped.
In that exact moment of absolute panic, Yifei finally, deeply understood why Zeng Xiaoxian always chose to back down and flee the second an intense emotional situation presented itself. When confronted with an absolute, overwhelming force like Adrian Li, she genuinely had zero idea how to handle herself.
"Alright, Meijia! We need to head to the bank right now! ...Meijia?"
Yifei turned around, only to realize that the room was completely empty. Chen Meijia and the two heavy leather duffel bags of cash had completely vanished!
"Where the hell did that airhead run off to in the span of five seconds?!" Yifei scratched her head in total confusion.
Meanwhile, around the quiet corner of the hallway...
"Hey! Why are you pulling me out here?!" Chen Meijia asked, glaring suspiciously at Lu Ziqiao, who had stealthily dragged her and the duffel bags out of the room.
"Meijia... listen to me very carefully," Lu Ziqiao whispered in a strange, trembling voice.
He looked haggard. Deep, dark circles bruised the skin beneath his sunken eyes, his hair was a chaotic mess, and his hands were shaking uncontrollably.
"You... you officially received the bulk rent payment today, didn't you?" Ziqiao asked, his eyes darting frantically toward the heavy duffel bags in her hands.
"Yes! I collected a massive sum of money, and I am currently on my way to deposit it into the bank!" Meijia declared proudly, puffing out her chest.
Now that she was managing property accounts for the billionaire, her income had skyrocketed. Not only was her own rent completely waived, but she was earning over 10,000 yuan a month in administrative bonuses. In her own mind, she had officially ascended into the ranks of sophisticated, white-collar corporate executives!
"Meijia... I am in the middle of a life-or-death crisis," Ziqiao swallowed hard, his voice dropping into a desperate, pathetic whimper. "Could you please... please lend me fifty?"
"Look at you! How on earth did you manage to get yourself into such a pathetic, miserable state?!"
Seeing Ziqiao's defeated, broken appearance, Meijia's heart softened slightly. Without a single second of hesitation, she unzipped her personal purse, pulled out her wallet, and handed him a crisp hundred-yuan bill. "Here. Keep the change and go buy yourself some food."
"Meijia, I don't mean fifty yuan!" Ziqiao groaned, his face twisting in pure, unadulterated grief as he pushed the bill away. "I mean five hundred thousand yuan!"
"Five hundred thousand?!" Meijia's jaw dropped, her eyes widening in absolute horror before she exploded in rage. "Five hundred thousand for what?! Are you out of your absolute, damn mind?!"
Her mind instantly flashed back to their chaotic past. 'When I slept with this bastard back in the day, I had to pay for the hotel room myself, and the scumbag still managed to steal all my personal savings when he snuck out! Now he has the audacity to ask for half a million yuan?!'
"Meijia, I am begging you! This is an absolute emergency—it's like putting out a literal fire!" Ziqiao panicked, quickly gesturing with his eyes toward the end of the corridor.
Standing near the exit doors were three massive, intimidating men dressed in dark suits, their sharp eyes locked firmly onto Ziqiao's every movement.
"I went out clubbing at a high-end lounge last night and met a few breathtaking foreign women at the bar," Ziqiao explained frantically, his voice cracking with terror. "After barely ten minutes of conversation, they willingly followed me back to a luxury hotel suite. I honestly thought I was just being incredibly charming and suave!"
"And then?!" Meijia hissed, clutching the bags of cash tightly against her chest.
"When I woke up this morning, I found out those foreign women were actually top-tier, international elite escorts!" Ziqiao sobbed hysterically. "I unknowingly ordered six of them for an all-night package! Their official agency is demanding $60,000 USD for their services—which translates directly to over 500,000 RMB!"
"Five hundred thousand yuan for one single night?!" Meijia's eyes nearly popped out of her skull. "Why don't you just go jump off a building and die?!"
"Meijia, look at those guys standing outside!" Ziqiao whimpered, his knees trembling. "They explicitly told me that if I don't produce the liquid cash within the hour, they are going to kidnap me, drag me onto an unmarked freighter, and harvest both of my kidneys!"
"Call the police right now! You definitely need to call the police for a crime like this!" Meijia declared. Despite her usual airheaded, chaotic nature, when confronted with a literal life-or-death kidnapping threat, her survival instincts kicked in.
"It's completely useless, Meijia!" Ziqiao shook his head wildly, his face pale with utter hopelessness. "They belong to an international criminal syndicate! If I call the local police, these enforcers will vanish into thin air before the patrol car even arrives. And the second the police leave, they will slit my throat in the alley!"
Ziqiao truly felt that his life had reached its end. In the past, although he had constantly cheated, scammed, and grifted his way through life, China possessed an exceptionally tight domestic security state; even if he ran into petty loan sharks, the worst he would endure was a rough beating before being released. He had never interacted with genuine, international organized crime before—and he had certainly never owed half a million yuan!
"I don't have that kind of money! Don't bother me!" Meijia gritted her teeth, backing away as she tightly hugged the two duffel bags containing Adrian's rent money. "This is the Boss's money, not mine!"
"What seems to be the holdup here, kid? Where is our cash?"
Before Ziqiao could plead any further, a massive, muscular man with a completely shaved head and arms thicker than Ziqiao's thighs stepped out of the shadows. He loomed over the pair like a brick wall, his cold, scar-pitted face staring down at the terrified playboy.
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Give me powerstones.
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